As an instructor, you can view student grades as if all ungraded assignments are worth zero points in the Gradebook. This feature, called Treat Ungraded as 0, is located in Gradebook Settings. Treat Ungraded as 0 is a visual change and does not affect any grades. This setting shows the change in Gradebook calculations if ungraded assignments were given scores of zero. Enabling this option has no effect outside of the Gradebook; students cannot see any difference in their grade pages. Similarly, TAs or other instructors in the course will not see any change in their view of the Gradebook. Only the user who enables this option will see the affected grades.

When the Treat Ungraded as 0 setting is enabled, assignments that do not have a grade will be treated as if a student received a score of zero. You can disable this setting in the Gradebook at any time. Even when this setting is enabled, Canvas will not populate zeros in the Gradebook. Dashes will still display for each student submission.

Notes:

If multiple grading periods are enabled in a course and the All Grading Periods filter is applied, Treat Ungraded as 0 will not display in Gradebook Settings. A grading period must be selected for the Treat Ungraded as 0 option to appear in Gradebook Settings.

This feature affects the configuration of the Total Column in the Gradebook, which also applies to CSV Exports. The CSV file displays columns for the Current and Final scores: the Current score reflects the total while ignoring unsubmitted assignments (option disabled), and the Final score counts unsubmitted assignments as zero (option enabled). Learn more about downloading scores from the Gradebook.

Open Grades

In Course Navigation, click the Grades link.

Open Gradebook Settings

Click the Settings icon.

Treat Ungraded as 0

Click the Treat Ungraded as 0 link.

The assignment groups and total columns will automatically factor in all scores of zero into the overall percentages for each student.

We have a course with 60+ instructors giving lectures on 70+ topics. The instructors are not always staying on top of grading so most of the students' text submissions will remain as a "T" in the gradebook for the entire semester until all the instructors have finished grading at the end of the course. This presents a challenge for us. In the past when we used Moodle, I could download a course activity report, which would treat an ungraded submission as a 0 in the cvs file. This doesn't appear to be the case with Canvas. We usually send out a reminder mid-term to all the students who are falling behind (it's a 4-month course, entirely online and asynchronous). Is there any way I can still accomplish this somehow so I can send the same type of reminder out to our 120+ students?

I can definitely understand how that would be a challenge to stay on top of all of that grading for such a large course. I have a few suggestions that might help in this situation.

The first is to use a feature in Canvas called Message students who... This feature allows you to message students from the Gradebook who meet certain criteria. This can be done on an assignment by assignment basis. So if you have an assignment with missing submissions, you can message all students who do not have a submission for that assignment. You can learn more about that feature in this lesson: How do I send a message to my students from the Gradebook?

You can also download a CSV file like the one you described above from the Gradebook. It will show ungraded submissions and missing submissions as a blank cell, which can be filtered in the spreadsheet. While this isn't exactly what you're describing, I think it can provide some better filtering so you can message specific students. You can read more about downloading grades in a CSV file in this lesson: How do I download grades from the Gradebook?

I hope that one of these options meets your needs. If not, feel free to ask this question in Find Answers to see if any other Canvas users have run into this situation and might have a different solution that has worked for them.

Just want to update everyone on my "progress". I think short of the .csv file distinguishing between an ungraded submission and no submission, my best bet is to use the "Submissions" table in "View Course Analytics". This table appears to give me the total number of (graded or ungraded) submissions each student has made, which is what I have been looking for.

Thanks for keeping us (and the Community) updated on what you're trying and what's working for you. I would suggest a couple of things to keep all of this information together and to see if you can get a better resolution on this. First, others in the Community might find your comments and other info you've gathered useful, so if you'd like, you can create a discussion page here in the Community to document everything you've found out (read more about creating a discussion here: How do I start a discussion in the Community?)

My other suggestion is to contact your Customer Success Manager as they may be able to offer some other solutions for the issue you're running into with the CSV files and managing data and assignment submissions in such a large course. If you don't know who your Customer Success Manager is, you can reach out to your Canvas administrator.

thanks for the prompt response. Unfortunately these 2 options won't address our needs, because our students are free to choose whichever topics they are interested in, as long as their total points earned meet the minimum for their credit load by the end of the course. So it will not make sense to email all the students who havn't submitted a written assignment for each topic. What I would really need is for the "T" (submitted assignment) to show up as something in the csv so I can distinguish them from the blanks (no submissions at all). Thanks for your help though. I'll follow your suggestion and post this question to the community.